README.rdoc

Social Stream: core for building social network websites

Social Stream is an engine for Ruby on Rails. It provides a robust and
flexible core with social networking features and activity streams for
building websites.

Social networking

Social networks are a new paradigm on web application design. Social
networking platforms stand among the most popular websites, while many
content oriented applications are supporting social networking features in
order to improve engagement, enhance user awareness and stimulate
communities around the website.

Social Stream is based
on social network
analysis (SNA) concepts and methods, including social entities
(actors), ties and relations. Social Stream is so flexible that you can
define custom actors (groups, organizations, institutions, social events)
and relationships (friends, collegues, members, administrators,
contributors, attendants, speakers).

It also provides a new tie-based access control model, which grants rights
at the relation level, allowing you to share activities with friends,
administrators, members or everybody.

Activity Streams

Activity Streams is a format for
syndicating social activities around the web. It has already been adopted
by some of the major social networking platforms.

Social Stream provides a
database schema based on the Activity Streams
specification, leading your application towards a well-known compatible
data model design. It is extensible so you can add your own activities
easily.

Installation

Add to your Gemfile:

gem 'social_stream'

and run:

bundle

Then:

rails generate social_stream:install

Do not forget to migrate your database

rake db:migrate

Social Stream modules

Social Stream is divided in modules. Developers can customize their social
network with the functionalities they need for each case.